Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  “I admire your fidelity, I really do,” I told him. “I resolve to copy you, eventually. But there’s more to life than a mission, Magnus.”

  “And more to life than the moment.” He put down a book on the lost tribes of Israel. “Ethan, I know you have a reputation as a Franklin man and a savant, but I must say you haven’t shown why. You’ve been skeptical, tardy, procrastinating, and shallow ever since I met you, and I don’t quite understand why you’re famous at all. You don’t take our quest entirely seriously.”

  I pointed skyward. “There’s just not much thunder and lightning in winter for us electricians. And my international diplomacy with the new president has to wait until they pick one. Why not enjoy a respite?”

  “Because we could be preparing for the test. Life is for accomplishment. If your nation was still in thrall to another, you’d understand that.”

  “I’m not so sure. The accomplishers I’ve met seem as likely to leave behind a heap of bodies, crackpot ideas, and financial ruin. Look at the French Revolution. Every time they accomplish something they’re dissatisfied with it and want to accomplish the opposite. My philosophy is to wait until the world makes up its mind.”

  “Then let’s wait in Washington, not this commercial Babylon of gossip and greed. The longer we linger in New York, the more chance our enemies have to catch up to us.”

  “I took care of our enemies in Mortefontaine, and Denmark is an ocean away! Relax, Magnus, we’re in America. And the farther west we go, the safer we’ll be.”

  Still, his criticism of my procrastination rankled, and once more I vowed to reform myself. “Waste not life,” Franklin had counseled. “In the grave will be sleeping enough.” So I seduced a widow with hips and hair to hang onto like a frisky mare, shattered rum bottles in target practice with my longrifle, tried to teach French to dullard merchants’ sons at the Redhook Inn in return for their buying the rounds of drink, and worked with a Yankee mechanic on a turntable mechanism for a New World version of roulette. “Own the wheel, don’t play it,” I advised him.

  I also tried the New York lottery, making a chain necklace of my losing tickets.

  This recess from reality was interrupted one day by a visit from an old employer, the maniacally ambitious Johann Jakob Astor. This German immigrant, who began as a musical instrument salesman but turned to furs, had earned far more in commerce than I’d ever even tossed away in treasure hunting. (A telling lesson, should I ever become industrious.) Astor had the drive of a dozen men, a wife who combined her blood ties to old Dutch families with a keen eye for fur, a fine new brick house on Dock Street, and the inability to enjoy anything but his ledger totals, given that he coupled his love of money with the parsimony of a preacher. When he found me at a tavern, I was the one who had to pay for the wine.

  “Gage, I didn’t think a gamesman like you would live to see thirty, yet here you are as diplomat and envoy,” he greeted. “It makes one wonder if biblical miracles could indeed be true.”

  “I hear you’re doing well too, John,” I said, feeling as usual somewhat defensive about my lack of progress. His coat was finest wool, his waistcoat was brocaded green silk, and the knob on his cane looked to be gold.

  “Rumor has it that you’re planning to venture west again,” Astor said. He never wasted much time in pleasantries or reminiscence.

  “After consultation with the new president, when he’s chosen. I’m bearing messages of goodwill from Bonaparte and hoping to play a role in improved ties between the United States and France.”

  “Tell me the truth, Gage—is your giant Norwegian lured by the fur business? Yes, I’ve heard of him, assembling maps and asking questions about distances and compass bearings. He’s a moody sort, and people wonder what the one-eye is up to.”

  “He’s a patriot who hopes to free Norway from the Danes. I took pity on him in Paris and offered to give him introductions in Washington. Mad as a mule milker, but with a good strong back. As for me, I’ve done some scouting for Bonaparte in the past, and the first consul asked me to take a peek at Louisiana. Great things are stirring that I can’t talk about.”

  “Are they now?” His eyes were bright as a watch fob. “Bonaparte and Louisiana? Now that would be a turn, to have the French back in the North American game.”

  “Napoleon’s curious, that’s all.”

  “Of course he is.” Astor inspected me over the rim of his cup. “I always liked your spirit, Ethan, if not your work ethic. So if you want a job after this sojourn of yours, keep count of the fur animals you see and come back to extend our enterprise. The future is in the west, Ethan—to the Columbia and beyond, all the way to China. This is the nineteenth century! Trade is global now!”

  “Isn’t the globe far away? The other side of it, I mean.”

  “A ship can take fur to China, return with tea and spices, and double your money in a year. But the fur, Ethan, the fur! That’s the key.”

  Well, that was the one thing we were likely to actually find where we were going: not mythical hammers, but small, rank, fuzzy, and rather valuable beasts. I’d count what I could, but my recollection was that the critters were rather furtive, for good reason.

  I asked about the current state of the fur trade, dominated by Montreal’s North West Company.

  “Four nations are vying for empire: Britain, France, Spain, and the United States. The English have the very best furs in Canada, blast them, and the Illinois country is being trapped out. The real fortunes are going to be made west of the Mississippi. The United States must confine the British to Canada or they’ll take it all! Between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, they dominate. But Louisiana! That’s the real question. Who will control America to the Pacific? Which is why I looked you up, Ethan, even though I’m a busy man, very busy indeed. You’re in danger, you know.”

  “If you mean Bloodhammer’s enemies…”

  “I don’t know who they are or what they want, but rumors are rife that bad sorts have their eye on you. Millions of square miles are at stake, and a man who has worked for the British, the French, and the Americans in turn is in a position to make a difference—and have foes. You’re quite the momentary celebrity, Ethan Gage, but lie low, lie low. New York can be a dangerous, brutal city.”

  “Anyone who meets me knows I mean no harm.”

  “Anyone you meet could do you harm. That’s a fact. I understand you have a rifle?”

  “Made by a craftsman in Jerusalem.”

  “Keep it as close as a frontiersman, Ethan. Keep it as ready as a Minute Man.”

  Chapter 12

  NOT KNOWING HOW TO EXPLAIN THE NORWEGIAN AND HIS odd theories, I took him to dinners and balls as an example of an oversized Scandinavian idealist come to see democracy in action.

  “So you’re a man of liberty yourself, Mr., er, Bloodhammer?”

  “The Danes are our British,” he would growl.

  “And you hope to emulate our republic?”

  “I want to be the Norwegian Washington.”

  When I confided Astor’s warning he took to wearing his map case like an arrow quiver everywhere we went, and with his eye patch, his cloak, and a new cane topped with an ivory unicorn’s head, its horn a steel protuberance, he was inconspicuous as a rooster in a henhouse. “We should go west now,” he insisted.

  “We can’t in the dead of winter.”

  In February word finally came that a president had indeed been chosen. “Ethan, shouldn’t we be journeying on to Washington?” Magnus pressed.

  “Exploration needs money,” I said as I dealt another hand of faro, which I was playing along with piquet, basset and whist. “Talleyrand’s silver dollars are already half-gone.” Like so many men, I consistently ignored the good advice I gave others, particularly about gambling. But my real reason for stalling was that we’d recently been given hospitality, thanks to my minor fame, in the home of one Angus Philbrick. He had a young German serving girl with braids that bounced on her breasts like d
rumsticks, and I suspected she’d be a fine bedwarmer if I had just a day or two more to practice diplomacy. The fact that I knew no German, or she English, seemed an advantage.

  It’s true that Magnus and I had been experiencing a curious run of bad luck I blamed on coincidence. There was a sausage cart that somehow got away from its donkey and almost ran us down. Then a fire in a hotel that led to Philbrick’s offer of temporary shelter. We’d slipped on a midnight sheet of ice from a carelessly spilled bucket, our downhill skid arrested only by the horn of Bloodhammer’s cane, which sent up a shower of sparks. Hooded figures coming up to presumably assist us took one look at the potential weapon in the fist of my hulking, one-eyed companion and disappeared.

  “I think we’ve been followed,” Magnus concluded.

  “Across the ocean? You’re daft, man.”

  That night, however, when I arranged for Gwendolyn to come to my room and tidy up when the others were abed, our Manhattan sojourn came to an abrupt end. She arrived as promised, and performed as hoped, and I had drifted off when something—the click of the door and the scrape of heavy furniture, perhaps—startled me awake. Gwendolyn’s place beside me was cooling, and there was an odd smell to the air. I slipped on my nightshirt, went to the door, but couldn’t pull it inward: it felt like the latch on the other side was tied to a dresser or chest jammed against the outer wall. I sniffed. Sulfur? I looked more closely. Smoke was drifting from under my bed.

  The window was stuck fast, too, and my longrifle and tomahawk were gone!

  Gwendolyn clearly had not finished as sleepy as I had, and had actually been quite busy, the cunning trollop. With no time to think, I picked up a heavy crockery washbasin, swung it to smash the glass and sash of my locked window, and dove headfirst toward the backyard. I managed to roll as I came down, cartwheeling into cold snow, and came up bearing the durable basin as a shield.

  “Ethan!”

  I looked toward the kitchen door and there was Magnus Bloodhammer, twirling his cane overhead and looking straight at me as if to attack. Was he my enemy? I crouched, holding out the basin as meager protection and then it exploded in my hands—but not from his cane, which went whickering overhead. I dimly realized a shot had come from somewhere, and then there was a surprised grunt and I turned to see a black-clad assailant pitch backward into the necessary house, a pistol dropped, and the point of Bloodhammer’s walking stick stuck fast between the bastard’s neck and shoulder. As he crashed down into the outhouse, I saw the flare of another fuse.

  “What in Hades?”

  There were twin roars. Behind me my bedroom erupted in a gout of flame, glass, and brick, making me crouch even more, and then poor Philbrick’s necessary house blew up in thunderous counterpoint, sending skyward a fountain of slivers, my would-be assassin’s body parts, and sewage. I tucked into a ball between the two blasts. Debris, much of it odoriferous, rained down to pock-mark the snow and spatter me with offal. Feathers from my destroyed mattress drifted down like flakes, sticking to my nightshirt and hair in each spot I was splattered with shit. I realized that my enemies had intended to be thorough. If the bedroom bomb could not be set, I was to have met my maker when I mounted the outhouse throne.

  Though half-deaf, I could hear dogs barking and bells ringing.

  Before I could do something more productive about my situation—like run—Magnus appeared again, waving my longrifle. I cringed, but he didn’t shoot me.

  “I charged her with a poker and she dropped this after she missed her shot and hit your basin,” he explained. “You’ve used up three lives in thirty seconds! Plus my perfectly good cane!”

  “I thought I’d performed with her better than that,” I said with numb wonder, shaking at my near-escape. I tottered toward him, my bare feet freezing and my body covered with feathers, and he began laughing. My assassins may not have killed me, but they had certainly finished off my dignity.

  “You look like a drowned chicken!” my companion said. “You need more care than a three-legged dog!”

  “I wonder if the lovely Gwendolyn was really speaking German. Maybe it was Danish.” I brushed at the feathers.

  “Too late to ask her. She ran to some horsemen and galloped away.”

  A flabbergasted Philbrick was looking out at us from the gaping new hole in the side of his house.

  “Maybe it’s time to get on to Washington, after all,” I said.

  Chapter 13

  OUR HURRIED DEPARTURE WAS IN LATE FEBRUARY, SHORTLY after Jefferson’s election in the House on the thirty-sixth ballot—a contest so drawn out and nefarious that it resulted in proposals to amend the Constitution. Burr would be vice president after all, and both men would be inaugurated on March 4. I kept notes because Napoleon would press me for details. He was as curious about our democracy as he was skeptical.

  “Magnus, do you really think Danish assassins trailed us here?” I asked, looking warily back as our hastily hired stagecoach rolled out of New York before Philbrick recovered wit enough to bring suit. “It’s not like we’ve found anything to prove your claims. Why bother? And why me instead of you?”

  “They could be church agents,” he said, ticking the possibilities off on his fingers, “believing you a pagan blasphemer by association. If it’s the Danes, they assume you’re my guide and easier to finish off than a true warrior like me. The British, of course, will suspect you as an agent of the French. The American Federalists think you a Republican, while the Republicans are whispering that I bought too many maps from the disgraced Tory bookseller Gaine. French royalists no doubt believe you a Bonapartist, while French revolutionary veterans might want to seek some measure of revenge for your defense of Acre against their comrades. The Spanish probably want to delay your announcement about the change in ownership of Louisiana, and all the powers fear I’ll prove Norway has first claim to the continent. Who cares who’s after us? The sooner we get protection from your young government, the better.”

  The trip south over the rock, rut, and root of American highways was travel’s typical misery. We shared our coach squeezed shoulder to shoulder with six other male passengers smelling of tobacco, onions, and wet wool, and at the end of winter the road was a wreck. Puddles were the size of small lakes and brooks had swollen into rivers. At the Delaware, we ferried.

  The landscape was a somber brown quilt of winter farms and woodlots. At least twice a day we passengers would be commanded to shoulder the wheel to get us unstuck, and our privy was whatever brush we were near when need struck our driver. We’d shamble out, stiff and cold, to piss in line like a chorus. The inns were squalid, all the men having to share beds and all the beds sharing rooms. Magnus and I squeezed onto a tick mattress no wider than a trestle table, with four other beds in our dormitory besides. The crammed bodies provided the sole heat. My bedmate snored, as did half the company, but did not turn overmuch, and he was always solicitous enough to ask if I had enough room. (There was no point to stating the obvious: “No.”) Exhaustion brought me blessed unconsciousness each midnight, and then the innkeeper would rouse us for breakfast in darkness at six. Philadelphia is supposed to be a two-day journey from New York, but it took us three.

  “Do you really want to be Norway’s Washington?” I asked my companion once to break the tedium. “It sounds like the kind of ambition Napoleon boasts of.”

  “That was just flattery for you Americans.”

  “So what is your modest goal, Magnus?”

  He smiled. “Immodest. To be much more than Washington.”

  Eccentrics always aim high. “More how?”

  “With what we seek. To reform the world, good men have to have the power to control it.”

  “How do you know you’re good?” This is a more complicated question than many people admit, in my opinion, since results don’t always match intentions.

  “Forn Sior enlists the righteous and grooms the good. We try to be knights ourselves in ethics and purpose. We’re inspired by the best of the past.”

>   “Not tilting at windmills, I hope.”

  “People call quests quixotic as if to ridicule them, but to me it’s a compliment. Purpose, perseverance, purity. Believe me, it will be worth the hardship to get there.”

  In Philadelphia I was regarded as somewhat the prodigal son, having many years before unwisely deflowered one Annabelle Gas-wick and fled to an apprenticeship in Paris with Benjamin Franklin, who offered refuge, thanks to his Masonic connections with my father. I’d managed to spend my meager inheritance in six months of gambling, but now I’d returned with a measure of notoriety: a hero of sorts, bridge between nations!

  “We thought you a rascal, but you have some of your sire’s character after all.”

  “None of his sense,” I admitted.

  “Yet you know men like Bonaparte and Smith and Nelson.”

  “Franklin’s mentorship allowed me to travel in high circles.”

  “Ah, Franklin. Now there was a man!”

  We were stalled two days in Delaware by late snow, and then reached Baltimore a wearying five days after leaving Philadelphia.

  “We’re close, are we not?” Bloodhammer finally asked crankily. “This is a big country you’ve invented here.”

  “You’ve seen but the smallest fraction. Are you beginning to wonder if your Norsemen could have marched as far as your map claims?”

  “Not marched, but rowed, paddled. Sailed.”

  The road to the new city of Washington was little more than a track. Gone were the neat farms of Pennsylvania, and the woods between Chesapeake Bay’s principle city and the new seat of government were as raw as Kentucky. Our way would open to a clearing of stumps and corn, with shack cabin and ragged children, and then close up again into a tunnel of trees. Some homesteads were attended by two or three slaves, and while Magnus had seen Negroes in Paris and New York, he was fascinated by their ubiquity and misery here. They made up, I knew, more than a fifth of my nation.